About Startup Weekend

Startup Weekend is a 54-hour event designed to provide superior experiential education for technical and non-technical aspiring entrepreneurs. Beginning with Friday night pitches and continuing through brainstorming, business model creation, market validation, and basic prototype creation, Startup Weekend culminates with Sunday night demonstrations and presentations. Participants create working startups during the event and are able to collaborate with like-minded individuals outside of their daily networks. All teams hear talks by industry leaders and receive valuable feedback from local entrepreneurs. The weekend is centered around action, innovation, and education. Whether you are looking for feedback on a idea, a co-founder, specific skill sets, or a team to help you execute, Startup Weekends are the perfect environment in which to test your idea and take the first steps towards launching your own startup.

Eric Nakagawa

Eric Nakagawa is a Hawaii-born entrepreneur that found his way to San Francisco by way of cat pictures, mobile apps, travel websites, mobile shopping wish lists, and magic internet money. He advises, builds, and muses @ericnakagawa.

Previously, Steve was co-founder, chairman and CEO of pioneering loyalty marketer MyPoints.com. He led the company from inception as Intellipost Corp. in Nov. 1996 through its successful $46 million IPO (Aug. 1999), $211 million secondary offering (Feb. 2000) and beyond. Under Steve's stewardship, MyPoints.com grew to a peak market value of approximately $2.3 billion.

Devin Egan

Devin Egan is a co-founder and the CTO of LaunchKey (https://launchkey.com), a company created after a Startup Weekend win in July 2012. With more than 15 years of experience in systems architecture, development, administration and security, this University of Montana graduate is no stranger to leadership and creativity in tech. Prior to LaunchKey, Devin was a lead developer at Selling Source LLC and co-founder of Ion Solutions, an online hosting company.

Bernard Uy

Bernard Uy co-founded Wall-to-Wall Studios in Pittsburgh, PA in 1992 and in 2005 returned home to launch the second office in Honolulu.

The agency specializes in growing brands through an integrated approach to design, technology and advertising, collaborating with local and national clients. Wall-to-Wall Studios has long been known for using humor, wit and emotion to forge connections between the brand and the audience.

Bernard has been actively involved with AIGA.org as past President of both Pittsburgh and Honolulu chapters. He has taught Communication Design as an adjunct professor at Carnegie Mellon, and as a visiting professor at the St. Gallen School of Design in Switzerland.

In 2009, much to his disbelief, he was named “Advertising Man of Year” by the Hawaii Chapter of the American Advertising Federation, and became a father. He spends most mornings thinking about lunch.

Meli James

Melialani James is the Program Manager at Blue Startups, a Honolulu-based venture accelerator that invests in and provides hands-on mentorship to capital-efficient and scalable companies and entrepreneurs. Meli has leading experience in mobile apps, web-based products and community building. Born in Hawaii, Meli lived in Silicon Valley for over 10 years, where she co-founded and contributed to numerous start-ups in the Bay Area and Honolulu, including Nirvino – #1 ranked wine app, an Apple Platform Top 100 App, Top Ten Lifestyles App, Apple Staff Picks, App Store Essentials, and featured in in-store displays in every Apple Store nationwide. Meli is a graduate of Cornell University.

George Kellerman

George Kellerman is a Managing Partner & Fire Chief at 500 Startups (http://500.co), the most active early stage seed fund in the world. Over the past three and a half years 500 Startups has invested in over 630 startups, several of which originally came from Hawaii, including Colourlovers, Tealet, and Volta. In fact, George discovered Tealet while serving as a judge during a StartupWeekend Honolulu in 2012.

George lived in Hawaii from 1991-1994, and during that time he graduated from the University of Hawaii at Manoa with a BA in Philosophy, and he also served as the Committee Clerk for Hawaii State Senator Matt Matsunaga, who was Chairman of the Senate Committee on Science, Technology & Economic Development. George also met his wife in Waikiki and was married at the state courthouse 23 years ago.

George left paradise in 1994 and moved to Japan. Later he went to law school at UC Berkeley and held senior executive positions at Yahoo! Japan, Dell Japan, and Experian Interactive. Despite the fact that he currently lives in Silicon Valley he is still drawn to the beauty and aloha of Hawaii and tries to visit whenever he can.